Ed Miliband
Ed MilibandReuters

British Labor Party leader Ed Miliband said he would support recognizing "Palestine" as an independent state should it help bring about a peace deal in the Middle East, news site RT reported. 

Miliband, the head of Britain's main opposition party, is matching up surprisingly well with Conservative leader David Cameron in polls for general elections in May. 

Asked by a reported on Friday if his potential future government would recognize the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a state, Miliband replied that his party had already supported parliament's symbolic vote to recognize Palestine back in October. 

"What we said at the time of that vote was that it was a vote about the principle of recognition. And clearly a decision about when recognition would take place was dependent on how it would constructively help negotiations,” Miliband added. 

“I am not going to get into, today, speculation about when that would precisely be. That is a judgment we would have to take at the time.”

That non-binding resolution passed by 274 in favor to 12 votes against. It was meant to "recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel" as part of a "contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution."

While Miliband insisted that Labor MPs back the motion initiated by their fellow Labor parliamentarian Grahame Morris, Prime Minister Cameron refrained from participating in the vote, noting it would not change Britain's diplomatic stance.

Miliband, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust refugees, visited Israel last April and made clear his political stance. 

On a trip to Judea and Samaria and then later to a Bedouin camp, Miliband argued "settlement expansion" in the area posed “a mortal threat to the two-state solution and to a successful outcome of the peace process.”